The night-walkers of Uganda

265

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Radiohead fans pay £2.90 for digital 
album 
Alexandra Topping
November 7, 2007
In October 2007 Radiohead asked their fans 
to pay as much - or as little - as they liked for a 
digital download of their new album,
In Rainbows.
So what were people willing to pay? The answer 
is, around £2.90.
But only 38% of people who downloaded the 
album paid anything at all. Two thirds paid only 
the 45p charge for handling.
The average amount that fans were willing to pay 
was still only $6 (£2.90) – far below the price of 
a CD or the amount a digital album would cost to 
download from the Apple iTunes store.
During the first 29 days of October, 1.2 million 
people worldwide visited Radiohead’s In 
Rainbows website. A large number of these 
visitors downloaded the album. The study 
showed that 38% paid to download the 
album, but that the remaining 62% choose to 
pay nothing. The percentage of people who 
downloaded for free in the US (60%) is only very 
slightly lower than in the rest of the world (64%).
The Radiohead ‘honesty box’ experiment is 
being closely watched by other artists, their 
record labels and management companies. 
Even though sales of live concert tickets are 
increasing, CD sales are decreasing. This is 
because of increased competition and piracy.
Worldwide, people download 20 tracks illegally 
for every digital download they pay for. So it 
seems that Radiohead’s experiment
was successful. 
© Guardian News & Media 2007
First published in The Guardian, 07/11/07
For more background information, please refer 
to the onestopenglish weekly news lesson 57 
from October 11th 2007, ‘Radiohead’s bid to 
revive the music industry’ and
http://www.inrainbows.com/
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